Obamacare News: People Can Sign Up For Health Coverage Past Tuesday Deadline

The Obama administration has again extended the deadline for Americans to sign up for health insurance at HealthCare.gov - making this the third time the administration has done so.

The Obama administration said it would allow a "special enrollment period" for those who miss the Tuesday deadline to sign up at 11:59 p.m.

The new deadline comes during a last-minute increase in the number of people interested in signing up, The New York Times reported. The Obama administration said the website received "two million site visits" alone on Monday.

The original deadline for people to sign up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act was Dec. 15. That deadline was meant for those who wanted their coverage to take affect Jan. 1, 2014. The Obama administration later extended that deadline by eight days to Dec. 23.

On Monday, that deadline was then extended to 11:59 p.m., Tuesday.

Then in another attempt to enroll the most amount of people for Jan. 1 coverage, the Obama administration announced people would be able to sign up past Tuesday if they can prove they missed the deadline due to problems beyond their control.

"If you weren't able to enroll in an insurance plan by Dec. 23 because of problems you had using HealthCare.gov, you still may be able to get coverage that starts Jan. 1," the website said, according to The New York Times. "Even though we have passed the Dec. 23 enrollment deadline for coverage starting Jan. 1, we don't want you to miss out if you've been trying to enroll."

The health care website then explained the type of problems visitors may run into.

"Sometimes despite your best efforts, you might have run into delays caused by heavy traffic to HealthCare.gov, maintenance periods, or other issues with our systems that prevented you from finishing the process on time,"site said. "If this happened to you, don't worry- we still may be able to help you get covered as soon as Jan. 1."

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